Even the demons believe and tremble. The devils, the devil himself believes. He believes that God exists. He believes that God is all powerful. He believes that everything is controlled by God. He believes it and he knows it, but he's still the devil. And he'll never change. And some of us are devils. Only God can change us. We need that power in our lives. It's a powerful thing when James tells us in James 2 that even the demons believe and tremble. And it's a terrible thing to see people, and I've had them in my own family, people who know the gospel, who know and even teach it to other people, and they're not saved. They're just words. On the other hand, there are people that don't appear to be saved and may be saved. We don't know. Ultimately, we don't know. God knows. And we know in our own hearts, I think. Being a Christian is not just tradition. That is, there are people that are locked in their tradition, and they believe because they're in the right tradition, that they're saved. Like the Jews. James talks to the Jews, and he says to the Jews, you have a tremendous, powerful background. For centuries, you've stood for God as a people. But you Christians that I'm writing to, You may not be Christian, and I want to make sure that you're really Christian. Just having the right tradition and the right beliefs does not make you a Christian. Of course, certainly if you're in the church that's a dead church, you may very well be dead. They're dead churches, churches that have forgotten what the gospel is. They don't teach their people that it's necessary to be born again like the Bible says to us over and over and over again. So tradition's not going to save you. Just being in the right group and the right tradition Being a Christian isn't just being baptized. We fought that battle at our own OPC. Strangely enough, we had a professor that, from reading the scripture, in particular from reading the book of James, concluded that part of what your being a Christian is, is if you're baptized. And so if you're baptized, you're in the club. You're in the kingdom of God. But baptism does not make you saved. I know because I was baptized at one point in my life. I can't talk for myself because I really don't know when I was saved. But I know that my children were all baptized and they didn't all turn out to be Christians. One of them was baptized and not a Christian. He became a Christian later in life. Thank the Lord. It's a wonderful thing. Two others were Christians, and they've always been Christians. They don't remember ever being saved. You don't remember that you were ever saved. I don't remember my birth. Do any of you remember your birth? I was there. But I don't remember it. It doesn't make any difference whether I remember my physical birth or not, because the evidence of that is that I'm alive. And the same thing with being born again. Do you have Do you have the right memory? Do you show signs of spiritual life? Being born again is not having the right family training. I know that my own family. It's a very hard thing to see your children turn away from God. It's really difficult. We pray for our children. I still pray for those that I believe are not saved. I believe they're not saved because they don't follow God. They have no joy in the things of God. Their joy is in other things. So all the family training and my children all went to Sunday school every Sunday. They learned all the Bible verses. Most of them were Sunday school teachers before they left the family. But that doesn't make you saved either. That's strange that they could teach others and yet not be Christian. But it happens. I know it happens from experience. Being saved is not a matter of knowing the truth. I've known people in the past that know the truth. Ministers in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church They went away from Christ and turned apostate. It can happen. They were deceived by themselves. And it's a terrible thing to see a minister turn away from Christ because he has so much knowledge of the correct things. And he's preached before that it's a wonderful thing to be Christian, and yet he's not Christian himself. Usually it happens because there's some kind of terrible thing that happens in his life. You think your life is hard, become a minister. My oldest son didn't want to become a minister because he said he didn't think he could handle the problems in the ministry, the attacks and the bitterness and the harshness. So he became an engineer. And I don't think there's any less problems there, just different kinds of problems. There's certainly problems because you lose your job. That's sort of a trial. Or you have a bad boss. That's a trial. And he's faced many trials. But he thought being a minister would be worse. What is true faith? We need to ask ourselves if we have true faith. The Bible teaches that it's necessary for us to be born again. The same word that's translated again can also be translated from above. You have to have a divine work in your life. God has to save you. And when that happens, we don't know when it happens. Sometimes we do know, I was raised in a church that everybody that was saved had to know when they were saved. And so they kept asking for the date for all of us. I don't know the date. And so I guess they felt I wasn't saved. I don't know. But they still let me come to Sunday school and church. They still let me go to their seminary and be graduated. But I don't know when I was saved. I just know that I was saved. And again, going back to my physical birth. I don't know, I don't remember the event of being born, the first time, that is the flush. But I know I'm born, how do I know that? Because here I am. And I couldn't get here without being born, so I know it. And the same thing as being born again. Some of us know when we are born again, and some of us don't. And I don't hold that against you as a Bible scholar, because the Bible doesn't tell us that we have to remember when we were saved. It just tells us that we ought to be saved. It doesn't matter if you're a boy or a girl. It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman. If you've not been saved, you ought to be saved. And some of us don't know when we were saved, and I have no argument with that. But the Bible certainly commands us. In Acts 16.31, we see that believing in Christ is commanded, they said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved and your household. I don't like on the translation, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, if it's translated that way, and I guess I lost the argument when it came to the translations. I wasn't even on the committee, so there was no argument. But the Bible says you should believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And what did he do? Well, he died on the cross for the sins of those who would believe in him. And God has to bring that belief into your heart. And I saw that in one of my sons who grew up and he seemed to be a Christian. He had all the signs of being a Christian. He even was a Sunday school teacher and he did very, very well as a Sunday school teacher. As he grew up, he was hiding in his heart the fact that he never was converted. And when he became a young adult, he became old enough, he began to live that way. And so he married a woman that he told me was a Christian, and he knew she wasn't a Christian. And he married her and eventually divorced her because she was still having a love affair with her first boyfriend. And so he made a bad choice that time, so he married another woman. Same problem. She was a bad choice. So eventually she left him, kicked him out of the house, and he ended up without any money, without any place to go, and he went to the church, a church that he knew about, happened to be a reformed church, and they let him sleep. in the annex for a while until he got himself together. So they treated him very well. But that experience God used to bring him to salvation. So he learned that nothing was worth it. He was a success in many respects in life and he knew a lot of stuff. He had a lot of information in his head. But he didn't have the work of God in his life. We can't stimulate the work of God either. That's sort of frustration. It has to come from God, the Bible says. So God will work in your life. Does that mean you shouldn't make a decision? No, it means you ought to make a decision. God determines. He commands you to believe in Christ, but you can't believe in Christ unless God allows it. Isn't that interesting? So if you're puffing up your chest and spiritually speaking and saying, I'm just not convinced. You don't have to be convinced. You're going to hell. We tell you that. I don't believe in hell. Well, that's okay, you don't have to believe in it, but it's real. And you're going to go to hell. And in your life, if you don't have Christ, you're going to have terrible disasters. We have a great president, at least I think he's a great president, but I don't believe he's a born-again Christian. I don't believe so because he doesn't say he is. Does that mean he's evil in everything he does? Well, not from the world's perspective, but from God's perspective, yes, you can be a multimillionaire, you can do a great job as president, and we may have our differing opinions. I think he's doing a great job, but he's going to go to hell if he doesn't repent of his sin. Well, he's never heard of it. He has heard of it. God speaks to every person. They all know that they're in rebellion against God, the God of creation. They all know they ought to serve him because the Bible tells us that in Romans chapter one. They all know. And yet they say they don't know. Well, men say all kinds of stupid things and it's okay, they can be stupid if they want. Me too. But I'm not stupid about being born again because God spoke to my heart and he saved me. He convinced me that unless I turn from my sin, I'm going to go to hell. I don't want to go to hell. But there's more reasons than that. Also, being a Christian means you follow the law of God. And if you follow the law of God, it does great things in your life. Well, let's see here. We want to also see that not only is being born again commanded, but in John 3, 3, Jesus says it's required. Most surely, I say unto you, unless One is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Sometimes those who aren't born again, they don't even acknowledge there's a kingdom of God. They don't even believe in God, they say. But the Bible says they do believe in God. So no matter, you know, people are, they can lie. They lie to themselves, and, no, of course you don't. No one lies. You get out in the world very much, you find that almost everybody lies. and they lie about almost everything. When you get married, you make a vow, tell death do us part. And that we see all the time, people violate that pledge. If you're a Christian, you won't violate it, unless your partner violates it. But you may be sincerely as an unbeliever saying until death do us part. But there's all kinds of unlesses, unlesses, unlesses. You know what I mean? Oh, death do us part unless she turns out to be a rotten cook. Or death do us part unless she turns out to be a wild-eyed, controlling, bitter woman. Or unless she won't do what I want. Or unless she grows old and ugly. There are all kinds of reasons why they get divorced. and the same people, but these people all know it's wrong. It's not only required, it's commanded, we saw that, it's necessary, it's required. Unless a man's born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God, he can't understand what we're talking about when we talk about the kingdom of God. As you go through life, everybody has ups and downs. Everybody has to face problems that seems to be impossible. You just can't solve these issues and these problems. What does the Christian do? Well, we know that God's gonna solve the problem. We work at it the best we can because he commands that in the Bible. So we're not just ninnies that go through life just saying, ooh, it's all gonna be okay. We're not that, we do the best we can. God commands us to do the best we can. And so we do, and yet we also know we have the security that God's going to take us and do with us what he wants, and it's going to be ultimately for our good. It may take us to persecution and being fired off a job and being mistreated and talked about, all kinds of stuff, but God is our pillar in life, a strong pillar. Well, in John 3.16, Jesus said, do not be surprised, or do not marvel, but I said, why would they be marveled? He says to the Jews, his audience of the Jews, who were all trained in the word of God, of course, it's the Old Testament, but the Old Testament talks about being born again, not in so many words, but it does talk about being born again, and it knows, they know that they're evil and wicked before God, if they're not. Just look at the Jews of Jesus' day. How many of them were truly born again? Very few. They're like Americans today. How many Americans are born again? I believe very few. Now, I can't look at them and tell you which ones are saved and which ones aren't, because I'm not God. I don't know what's going on when it comes to individuals. I know my own heart. That's all I can know. And I know God has worked in my heart. And he's worked in my life in a wonderful way. Life would have been a lot more difficult if it weren't for God behind everything and assuring me in the Bible that it's all going to work out alright. I have hope that can't be taken away. Even if I die, or if I'm killed in the most terrible way, they can't take away from me the fact that I have an eternal home to go to. Now the ungodly can't believe that. They can't believe it without lying to themselves. How do I know it's true of me? Because I read the Bible. When I read the Bible, in there I see the living, the words of the living God. And it changes my life. If I need some comfort, I can go to the Bible. It's there. It may not always be in a particular verse. It might be that God just works in a wonderful and marvelous way in the life of those of us who are believers. You have something to live for. What if I had to have no money? Well, I faced that. I was a minister. We went to a little church in western Pennsylvania. Diana was going over the figures. It wasn't that we had no money, but in order to eat, we had to have a garden. And we weren't living high, I had to learn to fix my car. That was a wonderful thing. We had a flat or something and I called one of the men in the church and I said, would you please come and show me how to change a tire? I can't remember exactly what he said to me, something like, you know, you've got all this education, why are you so stupid? He didn't say it that plain, but that was true. And we had, in the little manse, a light. One of the little light switches went out. I didn't know how to change the switch. So I called one of the guys, and he came over, and I got almost the same treatment with him, too. But you spend all your lifetime reading books and learning languages. You don't know anything about electricity and about fixing the car. That was always done by someone else. If they didn't do it, the car just sat. But they taught, I had to learn some things. And that was good for me. But you see, you don't have all the answers as a Christian. You still have to learn things. But God's there with you and God was there with us in that congregation. Then we went, I'm not gonna go through the whole history, but God, you always have tests and trials and things seem to fall apart. And if you don't have a strong relief in God and a strong experience with him, an ongoing living experience, then all these things throw you off kilter. Something happens and everything falls apart. But if you really walk with the Lord, nothing ever falls apart. because they can't take from you the promises of God in the scripture. And we know that they're real because he does it in our hearts and in our lives. He gives you an inner peace, an inner happiness. There may be bad things that happen, but you can go through all those things because you know behind all of it is the hand of God. How do you know that? The Bible tells you so. And God confirms it in your life that that's true. No matter what happens, life or death, No matter what happens. You lose your job, which happens to me before, and God's there with the provision. You might have to go down to a pretty low eating level, but it's there. Things are there for you. At least he always has for me. Being born again, that requirement, we shouldn't be surprised at that. Being born again is not what we earn, because the Bible says the wages of sin is death. It also teaches us that every one of us is a sinner. Now, there are some people, maybe even around here, that might say, I'm not a sinner. Well, they're just liars. How do I know that? Because the Bible says they are. Who's right, God or them? Well, the Lord God is wrong. If you think you're not, well, I'm really not bad, I'm good enough to get in to the heavenly gate because I really don't deserve eternity in hell. Well, maybe you say, I don't believe in hell, so it doesn't exist. That's okay. But it's wrong. All those people who don't believe in hell, when they die, they're gonna be really surprised when they wake up in hell. But they're going to know it. They know it anyway. In their hearts, underneath everything, behind everything, they know that this is the outcome of their life. And they're not born again. Some of them even go to the church. And I know people in the church who have been saved in the past. I thought they were Christians. They acted like Christians. I thought they were Christians. And then they were saved and they said to me, you know, all that time I wasn't a Christian. I couldn't tell. And I just said to them, I'm glad you're a Christian now. What a wonderful thing. The Bible says, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It, that is the faith, is a gift of God. True faith is a gift of God. It doesn't come from us. It comes from the Holy Spirit who works in our heart. It's a For by grace you've been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it's the gift of God, not of works, not what we do, lest anyone should boast. If we could make ourselves good enough to get to heaven, then we could say, look how good I am. But the Bible says we're not good. And no matter how godly you are, you fail, I fail. And one of the reasons you get a good wife is so she can tell you where you fail. Diana doesn't do that very much, although she has lots of reason. But nonetheless, God says being saved is a gift from God. It comes upon us, not even because we ask for it. And after he changes our minds and our hearts, then we ask him sometimes. I have children that are clearly born again, and I don't know if they ever asked God to be born again. Now I did. I had a good time in my life when I asked God to be born again, over and over and over and over again. I don't know why, maybe I'm just stupid because I asked him so much, but I wanted him more than anything else. I didn't want to go to hell. God convinced me as a young child, or maybe not so young because I don't know when I was born again, convinced me that hell is real. I didn't want to go to hell. And I knew my own heart well enough to know I deserved it. And God gave me the grace to confess to myself what I knew. I wasn't one of these people who believe that they're really okay, they'll make it through the gate, the pearly gate, they may make it through by the skin of their teeth. There are no skin of the teeth entrances into heaven. There's no close, either you're born again or you're not born again, that's what the Bible says. Well, what is a dead faith? James talks about a living faith and talks about a dead faith. A dead faith is a faith that doesn't do anything towards God. A dead faith is a faith that doesn't serve God and that's why it says in James 2, James says to his listeners, these Jewish Christians, you know, it's just amazing that the Jews had so much Christianity. Of course, I was taught as a young boy that the Old Testament doesn't talk about Christianity and being a Christian. It doesn't use those words because Christ hadn't come yet. But it talks about being saved all the time. That's one of the premises of the Old Testament. And we see that in the Bible in Hebrews chapter 11, where it goes through the saints, the people who believed in Christ. And who does it start with? Abel. Can you imagine that? Hebel was a believer. Well, I guess that was before he was killed by Cain. But that doesn't make Cain's work okay. But the Bible gives this long list of things, and it teaches us, Hebrews 11, if it teaches us nothing else, it teaches us throughout the ages there have been people that God worked with that had to be born again. Now, they may not have known the language, But they knew the difference between serving God and not serving God. And that's the point of Hebrews chapter 11. And interestingly enough, and some people are amazed, it doesn't amaze me at all, they have some women in that list. God knows that women need to be safe too. You look at those little girls when they're born into your family, I mean the girls were so sweet, so were the boys. And you can't believe that they were gonna grow up and be mongrels. And they're going to grow up and they're going to be nasty. Well, my children weren't nasty, just a couple of them were. Not really. Okay, James says, you believe in there's one God you do well, even the demons believe and tremble. And that's the way the children are. come through the church and aren't really born again, and not everybody that goes to church is born again, but we have to make it clear to them, all of us, that you must be born again. You can be good and still be a dam to hell if you're not born again. or you can be not so good and still go to heaven if you're born again. But the Christian will be worried about being so nasty and being so far away from God because the Bible warns us, James warns us, that if you don't have a living faith, then you don't have a real faith, it's a dead faith. And what is a living faith? What is true Christian faith? James 1.25 says, but he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it and is not for a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does. So what is the faithful, the perfect law of liberty? Well, it's perfect because it's God's. It's the law that he gives in the scripture. You know, when New Testament Christianity believes in law, I was taught as a young man that there are lots of laws. You can't drink, you can't smoke, you can't do a lot of stuff. And some of those things might be true, but some of them weren't true. And so the list they made sometimes went beyond the scripture. That's what the Jews were good at, too. And the church that I was going to was a Christian church. They were sincere people. They were strong Christians, and I still believe they were strong Christians. But they weren't very well, properly educated in some of the things of God. They were well-educated in that a Christian is, you can be a dead Christian. You can profess being a Christian and think you understand it, but you don't live it. It doesn't change the way you live. Christianity is a life-changing experience. God changes your life. And he lives in your heart. You maybe can't explain it, but he changes your life. And of course, we know what the perfect law is, the perfect law of liberty. Most Christians think the Ten Commandments aren't the law of liberty, but they are. And if you read through the book of James, you can see that that's true. James 2, chapter 8 through 13 reads, if you really fulfill the royal law, which is the same thing as the perfect law of liberty, it's liberty because it frees you from the bondage of Satan. and doing what the devil wants. If you're not doing what God wants you to do, then you're doing what the devil wants you to do. And you can see it in today's society. As people get freer and freer in our society, what direction are they going? They go more and more into slavery. And the people who talk the most about freedom want socialism. They're so dumb not to know that socialism is having all of your freedoms taken from you. It's not giving you more freedom. And every time man has tried to show socialism, It's failed. They tried that in the early Americas. And when they first came over to America, the people, the Christians from Britain, thought, well, we're just all Christians. We're all good people. We'll just have a socialistic thing. Each one can work as he wants. And then he can eat as he wants to. We'll just let them follow their conscience when it comes to work. So what happened? They were starving to death. Because people wouldn't work. And so they said, okay, what we'll do is we'll divide up the lands into little farms, and each of you can farm your own land, and if you don't do anything, then you can starve. And they produced more than they needed. Because people will work harder to get food. If it's gonna be given to them, they won't work. The Bible system works. And so God gives us laws to follow. Why is that? Because we don't, by nature, know what to do. He gives us what the Bible calls the royal law, that is the divine kingly law. If you fulfill the royal law according to scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. That's not the Ten Commandments, that's God's law in the Bible, in the Old Testament. If you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, you do well. How do you love your neighbor? Sometimes people loving their neighbor means you beat them around, maybe verbally, not physically, but you treat them how you like and not how God likes. So to treat them, to really love your neighbor means you treat them according to the law of God. But if you show partiality with your neighbors, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors of God's law. For whoever shall keep the whole law And yet stumble in one point, he's guilty of all. Wow, what powerful words. We have to keep everything that God says in the Bible, every command that he gives us, we're responsible to keep it. And so what are Christians trying to, you know, if you fall in love, well, I fell in love with Diana. I did everything I could to please her. She was easy to please, so I pleased her. And I didn't give her very much time to think about it either. I would still be single today. When you fall in love, you want to do things to please the one you love. That's just part of love. When you bring a little baby home, you don't say, well, this one's ugly. I'm going to throw him out in the garbage. We'll get another one. No, you love the baby. And you do things, and as they grow up, you try to love them. And if you really love a child, you love them the way the Bible says to love them. In our world, they're trying to figure out how to love children. Now, they don't put it that way. But what do you do with children? Well, you want to harm their poor egos. You want to make sure that you encourage them in everything and give them everything. And so we're raising a bunch of spoiled brats in America. What is a spoiled brat? act like when he gets older, like a spoiled older guy. I mean, they're all self-centered. They don't really care about what happens to other people. Some of them do, some of them are on the better side of wickedness and some of them on the worse side. But the only way you can really get right is to get right with God. Whoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend at one point are convicted by the law as a transgressor. How many times can you break the law of God and say you're a good person? What God is saying, just break it once. If you don't worship and love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, you're done. You don't have to do it. You can do anything more to be wicked. You're wicked. Because the Bible calls you. That's one of God's commands. That you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul. How can you do that? You can't without the help of God. And thousands of Americans and thousands of churches have turned their back upon God. That doesn't mean they're all not Christian. They may be Christians in their hearts. I don't know. God knows. All I can know is about myself. For sure. I believe in you, if you'd say it to me, because you live a Christian life. But I don't know that for sure because I don't follow you around and know everything you're doing. And I've been shocked as a pastor at what some of the people and members of the church I was serving, what they were doing behind the scenes. How they were living was terrible, and they were saying they're Christians. And maybe they are Christians walking in sin. If that's true, God's pummeling them. He's beating them in their conscience. He's beating them to death. But the Bible calls us to keep the whole divine law. And then it goes, James walks us through some of the Ten Commandments. For we do not commit adultery. The same person also said, do not murder. Now if you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, and said, I do not murder. Now if you do not commit adultery, but do murder, you can become a transgressor of the law. I mean, people lie about what they're doing. They don't have to tell me anything. We don't believe in confession to the pastor. Because the Roman Catholic system says you go to the minister to get your forgiveness, because he's a tool of God. And if God taught that, I would believe that. But I don't think that's in the Bible. I can't forgive you your sins. In the Roman Catholic system, you can be forgiven of your sins. And the priest can do it. And they have a whole system. They make billions of dollars every year. One of the richest people in the world is the Pope. Although he may not be his relative, might as well be. Because he gets money from everywhere. And they sell forgiveness. We don't sell, you can't buy forgiveness. You can't give the church money and we'll give you back, well, we'll let you, this will get you 10 years in a place where you can be happy before you go to hell. That's what purgatory is, don't you know? They go to purgatory so they can work off and pay for the sin, pay back God for the sin that they haven't paid enough for while they were walking around alive. And some of them, if the Pope will open the door at the right time, they believe the door of heaven, at least the last I read, they believe that on New Year's Eve, I think that's the time, the door to heaven, between heaven and purgatory, temporary hell, The door will be open, and if you're at the door, and if you get through quickly at the right time, then you get into heaven. Where's that in the Bible? Be quick while the door's open. Only on New Year's Eve, that's when they're all drunk. Well, not all Catholics drink. But we believe that God, when you die, you stand before the living God immediately. And if you're not born again, you go to hell. And if you are born again, you spend an eternity in heaven. Now, people believe that. Some people do. I believe it. And then one of the things God does when you're born again is he tells you that the Bible is true. They're not words you hear. You know, when I fell in love to get married, it wasn't the words. that I was heard that told me I was in love with my loved one, at that point it was Diana, that I only fell in love once, that she's the only girl. I needed it several times. I don't know why the world's running around, they have to get remarried and re-loved because they don't understand love. But as Christians, we understand love. We know that, look, we're sinners. Diana married a sinner. And she could tell you all kinds of stories about that, because she knows my sin better than I do. And you're married, you can marry a perfect person. It'll never be perfect until you get to heaven, and if you're not saved and married to a Christian, you're not going to spend eternity with the one that you're married to. Because only those who are born again are going to go to heaven. That's our perfect destination. We believe it because it's in the Bible, And we see that what God does is true because we've lived with him. If in your life you follow the biblical economics, owe no man anything except to love one another. Now that doesn't mean you can't have loans, but it does mean that you don't get loans you can't pay off. You discipline yourself to live on what you have. I mean that's biblical economics, it works. And you may not have very much, but just remember how much Jesus had. He never owned a home. He never had a car. He never had a TV set. They didn't have any central heating. Of all these things, could he have had all those things? God could have made it right like that. He could have had everything, but God said no. Jesus is going to live in abject poverty. That is the lowest, as low as you can get on the economic level, that's where Jesus lived. and he was a son of God so we don't deserve better than Jesus. Christians understand that we discipline ourselves to focus as much as we can on the word of God on our true riches. So we spend our life trying to study the Bible, get more of the Bible in our head because it's glorious, wonderful works and words that refresh our life and encourage us in our lives and because Why does it encourage us? Because the Holy Spirit lives within us. We've been born again. Hopefully you're all born again. I'll start to say it again. I have two children that never knew when they weren't born again. So I know they weren't born again when they were born. And somewhere along the line, God saved them. And their lives have shown that they're really saved. And that's, so it's not a matter of age. It's a matter of where do you stand. Do you want to serve God or not? Well, so the title of the sermon, I hope you got it, Living for Christ, or Dead Christians and Living by the Law of Liberty. Do you live by the law of liberty? You do? You're indeed blessed. Let's pray. Precious Jesus, we pray, that you'd speak to our hearts. I don't know if there's anybody here that's not born again because I can't read their hearts, but you can. So, oh Lord God, you can, you read their hearts, you know where each one of us is, and we know also that they won't be saved because of what I say or what someone else says, unless that someone else is you. So we pray, oh Lord God, you'd speak to them. We thank you, each one of us who are born again, for the wonderful thing you've done in our lives. We pray, O God, you continue to bless us, keep us from evil, help us to be faithful to you. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.